Sound On Sight Radio# 120 – Director James Cameron

With the release of McG’s Terminator Salvation, we here at Sound on Sight thought it might be a good time to consider the series’ origins and originator. James Cameron makes his return to the big screen later this year with his long-awaited return to sci-fi, Avatar, but twenty-five years ago, he was only known as the director of Piranha Part Two: The Spawning. That was, of course, until he unleashed The Terminator, a grim sci-fi actioner powered by the uncanny casting of Austrian muscleman Arnold Schwarzenegger as an unstoppable, monotonous killing machine. After solidifying his place in the big leagues with The Abyss and Aliens, Cameron returned to the franchise with 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day, which this time featured Schwarzenegger as a force for good, in a fairly obvious attempt to make the film more palatable to mainstream audiences. It worked, of course, and in 1995 Cameron and Ahnuld reunited for the big-budget action-comedy True Lies. We’ll take a look at all three Schwarzenegger pictures before taking on the rest of the Terminator series in the following episode.